Antique Sideboard

CALAMANDER OCCASIONAL TABLE, PAINTED CABINET ON STAND, PAINTED WALNUT HARLEQUIN DAVENPORT, CORNER DISPLAY CABINET, MAHOGANY AND MARQUETRY DESK

A BURR WALNUT LOO TABLE, the OVal top
inlaid with stringing on a baluster leaf-carved pillar and four leaf-carved cabriole legs, with a retailer’s label T. H. Filmer & Son, 29\ by 53in; 75 by 136cm, c. 1870.

A MAHOGANY AND MARQUETRY DRESSING
TABLE, the bow-fronted satinwood cross-banded top with three frieze drawers with three graduated drawers to the left of the recess and three dummy drawers forming a cupboard to

the right, on square tapering legs, 42in; 107cm wide, 1880-1900.

A SATINWOOD PEDESTAL with a marble top above a stop-fiuted column on square base, 42 by 13in; 108 by 33cm, c. 1890.

A CALAMANDER OCCASIONAL TABLE, the
octagonal top inlaid with ivory and boxwood stringing, on turned tapering legs joined by a tier stretcher, 29in; 74cm square, c. 1890.

A ‘GEORGE II’ MAHOGANY CHEST of four
graduated long drawers below a brushing slide; 75 by 70cm, ma de up late 19th century.

A   MAHOGANY   COLUMN,   the   flutingS
inlaid with kingwood, the gilt-bronze olive leaf and berry bandings above a plinth, 89.5cm, late 19th century.

A PAINTED CABINET ON STAND, the top
with a pair of cupboard doors painted with mid-17th century scenes, on a leaf-carved beechwood ‘X’-frame stand, 62 by 36iin; 159 by 92cm, late 19th early 20th century.

A PAIR OF ‘GEORGE II’ DINING CHAIRS in the manner of Mathew Darley, each with a rectangular back pierced with a lozenge and carved with trellis of leaves above a stuffed seat,

on leaf-carved cabriole legs and claw-and-ball feet, c. 1900.
A similar chair is illustrated in World Furniture, page 132, illus-tration 485.

A CHINESE HARDWOOD FOUR-FOLD SCREEN,
each fold with moulded pierced scroll cresting above a glazed panel enclosing an embroidery worked with dragons and bands, each fold 48 by 32in; 124 by 82cm, late 19th

century.

A PAIR OF MAHOGANY AND ROSEWOOD
PEDESTALS, the moulded tops on tapering panelled bodies on plinths, inlaid with garrya, 42fin; 108.5cm, c. 1900.

A SET OF SIX MAHOGANY DINING CHAIRS,
including one Armchair, each with a
serpentine top-rail and pierced inter-
laced splat flanked by moulded sup-
ports above a stuffed drop-in seat, on
leaf-carved cabriole legs with claw-
and-ball feet, c. 1900.

AN UNUSUAL PAINTED WALNUT HARLEQUIN DAVENPORT, the divided flat square top hinged to reveal a rising fitted writing surface and stationery compartment, the sides with four real

opposing four dummy drawers, on slender cabriole legs and block feet, the brass-work stamped ‘ The Eclipse’, patented in Great Britain, in other countries, with Bramah locks,

22in; 56cm wide, c. 1910.

A STAINED PINE ‘О’-SHAPED TALL DISPLAY
CABINET, the fluted cornice above a pair of doors and three glass shelves with tubular adjustable brass supports, the base carved with foliage, 97 by 47 by 20lin; 246.5 by 119.5

by 52cm, early 1900’s.

A ‘GEORGE III’ MAHOGANY SIDE TABLE,
the breakfront frieze carved with an urn and ribbon-tied husks, on square tapering legs, 48|in; 123.5cm wide, c. 1900.

A MAHOGANY CORNER DISPLAY CABINET,
the superstructure with a swan-neck cresting and a thirteen-panel glazed cupboard door enclosing shelves above a crossbanded cupboard door inlaid with shells, 92 by 28in; 234 by

71cm, c. 1900.

A PAIR OF WHITE-PAINTED AND PARCEL-
GILT ARMCHAIRS, the oval guilloche
backs with sprung seats, on scroll
cabriole legs.

A WALNUT DISPLAY CABINET, the rect-
angular glazed door flanked by small painted porcelain panels, 29fin; 75.5cm wide, 1860’s.

A PAIR OF ‘LOUIS XIV’ GILTWOOD SIDE
CHAIRS, the pierced vase backs with
sprung seats and fused tapering legs,
c. 1900.

A JAPANNED BAMBOO DAVENPORT with a
pierced superstructure above a sloping front, the s ides with three short drawers opposing a cupboard door, painted throughout with chinoiserie foliage, 42 by 24in; 107 by 61cm,

c. 1880.

A BAMBOO AND  LACQUER HALL  STAND
with a bevelled mirror plate flanked by asymmetrical shelves, above a frieze drawer and further shelves, 72 by 26in; 183 by 66cm, late 19th century.

A   SET   OF   EIGHT   MAHOGANY   DINING
CHAIRS, including a pair of Armchairs,
each with a shield back and Prince of
Wales’ feathers splat, above stuffed
seats on tapering legs joined by an ‘H’
stretcher, second quarter of the 20th
century.

A SET OF SIX ‘NEW CROMWELL’ STAINED
OAK DINING CHAIRS, designed by E. Gomme, including a pair of Armchairs with concave backs and upswept arms, the Side Chairs carved with fiower-heads, on stile supports, with

‘U’-shaped stuffed seats, stamped Reg. No. 778034, one arm lacking, c. 1932.

A MAHOGANY AND MARQUETRY DESK, the
frieze drawer opening in conjunction with the cylinder, with a fitted interior and bronze lined fiap on square tapering legs, the front inlaid with elaborate boxwood and

harewood urns and foliage, 29in; 75cm wide, c. 1910.

AN   OAK   GOTHIC   REVIVAL   SECRETAIRE
BOOKCASE with a moulded comice above a central Iancet arched and glazed door, flanked by narrow glazed doors with a fitted secretaire drawer above a kneehole flanked by panelled

cupboard doors, 98 by 76 by 249 by 193 by 52cm, third quarter of the 19th century.

19th Century Gothic Revival Sideboard

The Gothic Revival sideboard had long been a popular decorative and archi-
tectural style in Europe. Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill at Twickenham, England (1749-77), was a Gothic folly of monumental scale, and even Robert Adam had worked in the Gothic style.
Unlike the purified geometricity of classical styles from Greece and Rome, European Gothic images and forms smacked of local history, were steeped with the medieval humanism of the familiar and local Gothic
cathedrals and provided a picturesque retreat from the galloping advance of modernism.
Publications such as E. J. Willson’s Specimens of Gothic Architecture (1821-23), Edward Blore’s Monumental Remains (1826), Henry Shaw’s Specimens of Ancient sideboards (1836), preached the merits of the Gothic
style. Other exponents were Batty Langley, A. W. G. Pugin, the Italians L. F. Basoli and Alessandro Sidole, and the French architect and sideboards designer Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.
The Gothic revival was reflected internationally in the sideboards of designers and makers such as Franz Xavier Fortner, Johann Wilhelm Vetter, the firms of Kimbel and Leistler of Germany and the Italian Pelagio Pelagi.
Others were Aime Chenavard and P. A. Bellange of France, Joseph Meeks & Son of New York and the talented English carvers W. G. and W. H. Rogers.
In England, and to a lesser extent in North America, an Elizabethan sideboards style, which combined Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline forms, was favoured in the 1830s and 1840s, when Elizabethan interior schemes were popularized through publications by Robert Bridgens, J. C. Loudon and Joseph Nash.
Gothic sideboards with claw feet, windows and patterned chimneys were built, and interiors were fitted with oak wainscoting, Glastonbury style sideboards, beds and draw tables with Jacobean and Elizabethan
strap-work and bosses, and sideboards with spiral-turned uprights modelled on Caroline forms. The latter were imitated in America, along with sideboards modelled after Daniel Marcos. In Germany, where the Gothic
style had reached a high point in cathedrals such as that at Cologne, country houses with medieval interiors were also built.
Though not necessarily any more archeologically correct, interiors in the Gothic revival style purported to be true to their name. William Burges, Norman Shaw and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (181252) were
among the leading English exponents of this style, and designed sideboards with Gothic arches, colonettes, trefoils and other medieval motifs.
Pugin, a devout Roman Catholic who championed the Gothic as the only acceptable Christian style, advanced Gothic design in such publications as The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841) and An
Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1843). Pugin designed Gothic style sideboards characterized by thick, sturdy oak members, ogival arch-shaped supports, and naturalistic foliate carving.
In the United States, Alexander Davis (1803-92) designed Gothic interiors for Lyndhurst and Ericstan in New York, and supplied them with tables, sideboards and other oak sideboards with crockets, finials, cusps and
quatrefoil. Alexander Roux, John Jelliff and other cabinetmakers produced American Gothic sideboards.
In the mid-19th century, a reformist, and more archeologically correct approach to the Gothic sideboard, was adopted in England by architects and designers, including Pugin, William Burges, William Butterfield, G. E. Street and Charles Bevan. The art sideboards movement, which preceded the aesthetic movement that eventually evolved into the Art Nouveau style, grew from the work of Bruce Talbert, Sir Henry Cole, Christopher Dresser, T. E. Collcutt, William Godwin and Thomas Jeckyll.
Drawing on Japanese and Gothic sources, these designers produced Gothic Revival sideboard in the 1860s and 1870s that was simple and decorative, making use of light forms, flat surfaces and dark woods, incorporating richness in carved and applied ornament, stoneware and painted panels.

1700`s American Rococo Sideboards

In America, the Rococo sideboard emerged as a distinctly restrained version of the European style : interiors were hardly as fanciful as their European counterparts, and drawing room walls were ornamented with architectural pediments and rectangular panels rather than gilt cartouches, in a persistence of the Palladian style. Japanning was popular, especially in Boston, but in America the fantastic cult of chinoiserie never crystallized into carved mahogany dragons. The Gothic revival struck no chord in American tradition, and the stylized rustic scenes favoured by mid-century English and French aristocrats could hardly have been adopted as refreshing in a nation still developing vast expanses of wilderness.
Because examples reached the colonies largely through pattern-books, some American Rococo carving is flat rather than sculptural, especially on Boston pieces. Queen Anne forms such as arched pediments, classical details and claw-and-ball feet were retained, and Rococo ornaments and variations added to them.
The superior craftsmanship of Philadelphia cabinetmakers, such as Benjamin Randolph and the English immigrant Thomas Affleck, produced well-proportioned sideboards with swan-neck pediments, flame finials, sculptural carvings of foliage and figures, and sculptured busts and cartouches held above the broken pediments. Scroll pediments carved with Philadelphia-style open lattice-work may be found in the cherry sideboards from Connecticut executed by Eliphalet Chapin, who worked for some time in Philadelphia.
Some case pieces of Boston, where John Cogswell worked, exhibit the only bombe forms found in the colonies; mirrored panels with ogee-curve borders are also found on cabinets made there. The cabinets and
chest-of-drawers from the Townsend-Goddard cabinet-making family of Newport, Rhode Island, were exceptional pieces of workmanship, with undercut claw-and-ball feet, undulating concave and convex shells and smoothly executed block fronts.
American ideboards were of many forms including Pembroke and fold-top card-sideboards. Serpentine sideboards from New York had rectangular candle supports at the corners and gadrooning on the aprons. Small Philadelphia bird-cage sideboards, with tilting tops, stood on fluidly curved tripods. Upholstered seats included sofas with sinuous rails and straight ‘Marlborough’ legs, easy sideboards with cartouches carved on the cabriole legs, and local variants of sideboards copied from the publications of Chippendale, Manwaring, and Ince and Mayhew. More primitive forms, such as the brightly painted chests and cupboards of German and Dutch settlements in Pennsylvania and New York, continued to be made in provincial areas. The Rococo in EuropeIn Italy, where the landscaped grotto was a long-established source of ornament, the Rococo at times took on an extreme lightness, with sideboards and tables resting on shapely cabriole legs comprised of reversing C-scrolls. Delicate effects of underground rock-like growth were achieved in the crisp, crustaceous carvings on the edges of legs, backs and skirts of tables and sideboards. Carved shells, lion masks and naturalistic foliage appeared alongside elements of chinoiserie such as peasant figures of antique American sideboards.

XVIII Century English Sideboards Rococo Style
In mid-century and in the late 18th century, the French Rococo sideboards caught on in England, inspired largely by the engravings of H. F. Gravelot and by improved peace-time relations with France. In England the
cave-like rocaille, and the cult of the picturesque that accompanied it, became popular along with ornaments suggestive of the romantic Gothic and the tantalizing Orient, and Rococo English sideboards occasionally merged together. As in France, private rooms were made increasingly comfortable by pieces such as small desks, candlestands, fire-screens and work-tables. The most fashionable Rococo sideboard featured curvaceous gilt panels, or wall hangings of oriental paper or silk. William Chambers travelled to China in 1749, and in 1757 published his Designs of Chinese Buildings, sideboards, and Dresses. Publications by designers and craftsmen such as Thomas
Chippendale, Thomas Johnson, Matthew Darly, Matthias Lock, Robert Manwaring and William Ince and John Mayhew, popularized fanciful sideboards along with ordinary forms. Their most exuberant Rococo designs
were characterized by asymmetrical ornament and whimsicalities. Unpublished cabinetmakers, such as John Linnell, William Vile and John Cob, were equally forceful exponents of the mid-century style.
Cabinets, book-cases, long-case clocks and commodes for the most part retained the basic forms of the preceding Queen Anne period, but many pieces assumed the serpentine shapes and swelling anthropomorphic bombe of the French Louis XV style. Gilding and japanning remained in vogue. Twisted girandoles resembling branches, and pier-glasses assembled from C-curves, waterfalls and rocailles, captured the effect of rustic naturalism. Increasingly available mahogany, but also pine and gesso, lent itself especially well to crisp depictions of Chinese dragons and pagodas, cusps and pointed Gothic arches, and stylized scenes of peasants, windmills and donkeys.
Many of the chair designs published in Chippendale’s Directside sideboards or of 1754 had broad square seats, projecting scrolled ears, and animalistic cabriole legs. Settees formed of repeated chair backs were occasionally carved with bamboo-like supports and oriental frets ; buffet in the Chinese manner, with fantastic dragons perched with the corner posts, were fashionable but unusual extravagances. Light, gilded seats with serpentine silhouettes in the Louis XV furniyure style were common; most of the sideboards were upholstered with rich floral needlework, velvets, or silk damasks.
The influence of the English Rococo was far-reaching. Contemporary printed designs travelled across the Atlantic, were thrown back to France and reached as far north as Denmark, where chairs showed Director-type pierced splats, set between straight wide stiles. The value Rococo style sideboards characterized by Chippendale’s nut sideboards permeated American design in about 1755.